A hacker using the alias “Guccifer” was credited last week with
compromising the AOL email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a
64-year-old journalist who formerly worked as an assistant to
then-President Bill Clinton. Now days after the security breach was
first reported, Guccifer has supplied RT and a number of other
media outlets and political figures with incredibly sensitive memos
that were emailed to Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary, in the wake of
last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The emails that RT received include four memos that Mr.
Blumenthal sent to Mrs. Clinton about the attack, all marked
“Confidential” and all containing references to sources speaking on
condition of anonymity due to the sheer seriousness of the
material. The most recent memo included in the trove is dated
February 16, 2013, and includes intelligence that comes “from
extremely sensitive sources and should be handled with
care.”

The oldest memo sent to RT is dated September 12, 2012 — mere
hours after four Americans were killed in a deadly assault on the
US consulate building in Benghazi. Chris Stevens, an ambassador for
the United States, was among those killed.

At the time of the attack, Mrs. Clinton was serving her final
few weeks as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, a
position that she relinquished earlier this year to former-Senator
John Kerry. Her knowledge of the Benghazi attack has become a
frequent matter of dispute, however, since information relayed to
the public in the immediate aftermath of the assault frequently
contradicted other intelligence.

Initially, many high-up US sources said the storming of the
consulate was in response to an anti-Islamic film that had been
made in America and uploaded to the website YouTube. In the days
after the assault, however, members of the US intelligence
community offered a different explanation, saying the attack was
not a spontaneous outburst prompted by the viral video clip but
were instead a coordinated terrorist attack launched by associates
of al-Qaeda.

According to the Blumenthal memos, though, even the US secretary
of state was being fed disinformation directly after the attack. In
the email dated Sept. 12, Sec. Clinton is told that the
anti-Islamic film was likely the catalyst for the assault.

“A senior security officer told [interim Libyan President
Mohammed Yussef] el Magariaf that the attacks on that day were
inspired by what many devout Libyans viewed as a sacrilegious
internet video on the prophet Mohammed originating in America,”
the memo reads. “The Libya attacks were also inspired by and
linked to an attack on the US mission in Egypt on the same
day.”

Elsewhere in the first memo, Blumenthal tells Clinton that
another source had even more to say about the assault:

“According to a separate sensitive source, el Magariaf noted
that his opponents had often tried to connect him to the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) through the National Front for the
Salvation of Libya (NFSL), a group established in opposition to
former dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi, which el Magariaf led in the
1980s. In the opinion of this individual el Magariaf believes that
he can survive potential negative publicity in this regard, but if
this situation continues to develop in this manner it will
complicate his efforts to establish an orderly administration in
the country. Again, he stated that the attacks on the US missions
were as much a result of the atmosphere created by this campaign,
as the controversial video.”

Later on, “a very sensitive source” is cited as saying
that the Libyan president’s enemies are likely “working to take
advantage of his suspected links to the CIA at a time when Western
intelligence services are under scrutiny in Libya.”

Five months later, though, another memo sent to Mrs. Clinton
painted a much different picture of what was happening abroad. An
email dated Feb. 16, 2013 contains the subject line
“Algeria/Libya/Terrorism” and touches on possible connections
between the Benghazi assault and the January 2013 hostage crisis in
In Amenas, Algeria near the Libyan border. In that dispatch, links
are drawn between both major incidents.

“Speaking on condition of absolute secrecy,” an
individual with sensitive access status spoke out on the attacks in
a memo that was given to Blumenthal, sent to Clinton and eventually
intercepted by Guccifer. According to that source’s claims,
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika “instructed commanders
of the Algerian external intelligence service (Direction Generale
de la Sécurité Extérieure – DGSE) to provide Libyan intelligence
chief, General Salim Hassi, with selected portions of the
information obtained in the investigation of the terrorist attack
on the facility at In Amenas.”

The source goes on to say that Algeria’s Pres. Bouteflika asked
the DGSE officers to pass along sensitive information obtained from
the interrogation of known and suspected supporters of the
terrorist group Mokhtar Belmokhtar, or MBM, which would later all
but confirm that al-Qaeda affiliates were involved in both
attacks.

“According to a knowledgeable individual, the commanders of
the Algerian DGSE reported to Bouteflika’s staff that their work
confirmed their initial suspicion that the MBM attack on In Amenas
was related to French military operations in Mali, as part of a
loose but growing coalition of Islamist groups, the Movement for
Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which was formed in
mid-2012 with funding and support from al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Mahgred (AQUM).”

“In the opinion of these individuals, MBM is a key member of
this group and was best placed to strike at a Western facility in
retaliation for the French operations in Mali. The Algerian
officials also believe that Libya’s Ansar al Sharia,” a
pro-Sharia law militant Islamic group, “plays a role in the
umbrella organization.”

“The In Amenas attack allowed MBM to stage an operation to
keep the Algerian government off balance,” the memo
continues. “These officials also stated that while Algerian
members of MBM had planned and led the attack, the guerrilla force
included experienced fighters from Mali, Libya, Saudi Arabia,
Somali and Egypt.”

From there, the source explains that the individual with
top-secret intel on the operations were instructed to keep
information received from the French DGSE confidential, but that
the intel “concerned the funding of the MBM operations and a
possible link to the Ansar al Sharia attack on the United States
Consulate in Benghazi.”

“This individual adds that this information provided by the
French service indicates that the funding for both attacks
originated with wealthy Sunni Islamists in Saudi Arabia. During
July and August 2012, these financers provided funds to AQIM
contacts in Southern Europe, who in turn passed the money into AQIM
operatives in Mauritania. These funds were eventually provided to
Ansar al Sharia and its allied militias in the Benghazi region in
support of their attack on the US consulate. The money was used to
recruit operatives and purchase ammunition and supplies.”

After the September 2012 attack, the MBM used remaining funds to
organize the In Amenas, Algeria attack, the source claims. If the
“extremely sensitive source” is indeed in-the-know, though,
the Algerian incident might not be the last major terrorist attack
that will occur in the Maghreb anytime soon.

According to the Feb. 2013 memo, the source says that Algerian
intelligence agency believe that al-Qaeda and their allies “will
continue to strike at Western facilities in the Maghreb, taking
advantage of countries where the security structure is disorganized
following the uprisings of the Arab Spring in 2011-2012.”

Previously, the hackers known as Guccifer has been linked to
breaching the Facebook account of Gen. Colin Powell, who served as
secretary of state under George W. Bush, and members of the
Bush dynasty. Guccifer has also targeted a “US
Senator, a senior United Nations official, security contractors in
Iraq, two former FBI agents and a Department of Defense
supervisor,” the Smoking Gun reports.

In the leaked memos disseminated to the media, Guccifer opted to
copy-and-paste the correspondence into new files — images of bold
Comic Sans text layered over a pink backgrounds — likely as a
security precaution to cover his own tracks.

The latest batch of emails was reportedly sent from the hacked AOL
account of a Hollywood actor’s wife in a further bid to obscure his
whereabouts. Two IP addresses linked to Gufficer have been traced
back to the Russian Federation TSG reports, though hackers
regularly engage in forms of subterfuge to conceal their actual
location via proxies, IP spoofing and onion routing systems such as
TOR.

Guccifier, who spoke directly to the Smoking Gun, is apparently a
male with a penchant for grand conspiracy theories.

“the evil is leading this f***ed up world!!!!!! i tell you this
the world of tomorrow will be a world free of illuminati or will be
no more,” the hacker warned.

RT has contacted Blumenthal's son Max, who said his father is
not going to make any comments over the leak.